American Numismatic Society Collection

April 6, 2011

Late yesterday a new search interface was unofficially announced for the American Numismatic Society collection database. One-line reviews via twitter so far include “Way cool! Way fast! Way slick!” and “Very, very nice!” One can filter the collection by Department, Category, Century, Date, Dynasty, Era, Issuer, Material, and Person, among other categories. You can sort the result set in the same variety of ways (Date on Object and Region or Issuer being the most useful, it seems.)

What’s it good for, if you’re not already studying coins? Off the top of my head, it’s a great resource for scholars or students writing about iconography or images of gods, emperors, god-emperors, etc. I searched Greek coins for those with Athena on them with images available in the database, and got 2453 of them. So, that would keep me busy for a while.